No. 6: Multimedia and interactives grow up

Multimedia and interactive projects continued their rapid evolution in 2008, becoming more central to the storytelling process in newsrooms of every size. It is these types of undertakings that underscore Jeff Jarvis’ proclamation: “The building block of journalism is no longer the article.”

This year saw projects with incredible breath and depth, incorporating a spectrum of technologies and storytelling methods. In addition to the obvious maturation and mastery evident in these approaches, another noticeable trend is the impact of development frameworks, particularly Django and Ruby on Rails — proving their ability to respond to news deadlines when placed in capable hands.

ESPN’s “Ray of Hope” story on Jason Ray, a mascot at the University of North Carolina, whose unexpected death led to life-saving organ donations for several strangers.

The Rocky Mountain News and MediaStorm partnered to create a comprehensive multimedia overview of the Democratic National Convention, “At last, at last, a dream fulfilled.” MediaStorm also partnered with Reuters to tackle “Bearing Witness,”an incredibly ambitious project chronicling five years of the Iraq war.

This list could go on forever — and it should. What great projects did we miss in this roundup? Post your suggestions in the comments below.

Tyson Evans is the editor of Update and an interface engineer at The New York Times. Full disclosure: Although he now works for The Times he wasn’t involved in any of the projects mentioned above. While working in Las Vegas, however, he contributed to the history project.